Why am I okay with this? The answer has to do with simple math and basic fairness.

This country is running enormous and unsustainable budget deficits that will bankrupt us all if they are not narrowed — and there is no way to do that without both cutting spending and raising revenue. (Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge is pie-in-the-sky fantasy and dangerous demagoguery.) Everyone is going to have to make sacrifices as part of a comprehensive budget deal along the lines of Simpson-Bowles, with tens of millions of people getting smaller entitlement benefits, for example, and tens of millions of people paying higher taxes.

It’s not class warfare to say that people like me — who aren’t suffering at all in these tough economic times, who are in many cases doing the best we’ve ever done and who can easily afford to pay more in taxes with no impact on our lifestyle — should be the first to step up and make a small sacrifice.